It was an unseasonably hot day today over 28° C in April. It felt like the middle of summer (we need more converts to the ECS*). As Fianna was engaged in self improvement activities all day I decided to make my shelving problems worse by buy myself some new BDs. As the nearest BD store is about 3 kms away and it was such a beautiful day I thought I would also test the new Velibs which are much too slowly being installed in Paris. The experience was a disaster. It took me 45 mins to be able to activate my card and then I had to go to 7 different stations to finally find a Velib that worked. To be fair the bike is actually much better than the old one, but that is all the more frustrating if its practically impossible to get hold of one. I think this fiasco may come back to haunt the Anne Hidalgo the (present Mayor of Paris).
Having walked home, read my new BDs and squeezed them into the appropriate shelves I was ready to go for an afternoon walk with Fianna, who was now available. We strolled down to the Place the la Concorde where Fianna treated me to a Passion Fruit Sorbet (not a fasting today as you can see) and then went into the Tuileries Gardens to sit on the public chairs and watch the ducks around the fountains. As this is Paris, aside from the ducks there were also quite a few tourists milling around.
What is the key activity of a tourist in Paris ? I'll give you one guess...Taking photos. Correct (all those who got it right get an extra half point in the competition). The sad thing is that taking photos in the 21st century has come to mean something completely different. Before smartphones, when people went on holiday, they took photos of a variety of things that they wanted to remember such as monuments, views, sunsets, local market stalls, mountains, oceans, buildings, statues etc. Now, as demonstrated by all these tourists, photos are always of yourself with (if you are lucky) vaguely discernible in the background a famous landmark. Photos are now taken not for remembering or for sharing your experience with your friends of colleagues. Photos are now excuses to do self portraits (selfies) which will then be posted to facebook or instagram with a label underneath showing where it was taken. What is the point ? Why do you need to go to Paris, Venice, New York or the Great Pyramid to take a picture of yourself posing ? What do people do with all these identical pictures of themselves obscuring beautiful things? I feel like asking them "Do you realise your head is completely blocking the Pyramid/Coliseum/Eiffel Tower". Maybe they don't know that Smartphones have a camera on both sides. I suggest that from now on, when you see someone taking a selfie please go up to them and show them that they can point the Phone away from themselves and towards the actual view thye want to photograph thus ensuring that it will occupy the full picture. (2 points for every selfie that you manage to avert).
*ECS: Environmental Cold Showers (see Day 2 blog)
Having walked home, read my new BDs and squeezed them into the appropriate shelves I was ready to go for an afternoon walk with Fianna, who was now available. We strolled down to the Place the la Concorde where Fianna treated me to a Passion Fruit Sorbet (not a fasting today as you can see) and then went into the Tuileries Gardens to sit on the public chairs and watch the ducks around the fountains. As this is Paris, aside from the ducks there were also quite a few tourists milling around.
What is the key activity of a tourist in Paris ? I'll give you one guess...Taking photos. Correct (all those who got it right get an extra half point in the competition). The sad thing is that taking photos in the 21st century has come to mean something completely different. Before smartphones, when people went on holiday, they took photos of a variety of things that they wanted to remember such as monuments, views, sunsets, local market stalls, mountains, oceans, buildings, statues etc. Now, as demonstrated by all these tourists, photos are always of yourself with (if you are lucky) vaguely discernible in the background a famous landmark. Photos are now taken not for remembering or for sharing your experience with your friends of colleagues. Photos are now excuses to do self portraits (selfies) which will then be posted to facebook or instagram with a label underneath showing where it was taken. What is the point ? Why do you need to go to Paris, Venice, New York or the Great Pyramid to take a picture of yourself posing ? What do people do with all these identical pictures of themselves obscuring beautiful things? I feel like asking them "Do you realise your head is completely blocking the Pyramid/Coliseum/Eiffel Tower". Maybe they don't know that Smartphones have a camera on both sides. I suggest that from now on, when you see someone taking a selfie please go up to them and show them that they can point the Phone away from themselves and towards the actual view thye want to photograph thus ensuring that it will occupy the full picture. (2 points for every selfie that you manage to avert).
*ECS: Environmental Cold Showers (see Day 2 blog)
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